


plastic to plastic

by overtture



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Dissociation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Identity Issues, Metaphors, Nightmares, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant - Persona 5: The Royal, Oh You Know. Rivals And All That, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Third Person Limited, Persona 5 Spoilers, Possibly Out of Character, Relationship Study, Rival Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships, ask to tag, vague lgbtq themes if u want to interpret it that way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25837345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overtture/pseuds/overtture
Summary: [SIDE A] [are you aware of how much you loom in the heart of someone you haven't met?]Sometimes, talking to Akechi is like combat. A rhythm of give and take. Back and forth. A dance.Akechi watches Akira brew coffee. Akira watches Akechi pause to write something in the margins.Akechi doesn't outline where he ends and where Crow begins; to be frank, Akira isn't quite sure where their relationship is after each night in the palace, where exactly Joker left off and where exactly Akira is expected to pick up.[SIDE B] [i need to understand why i tear myself apart thinking of you.]His mother called it passion. He doesn’t like to lie to himself unless it's convenient. There are three important facts he’s forced to acknowledge while building an argument against himself.One, that Akechi Goro is a hateful person.Two, that Kurusu Akira is one such aforementioned indulgence.And three, that Akechi Goro can’t decide if he hates him despite everything.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro & Persona 5 Protagonist, Kurusu Akira & Phantom Thieves of Hearts, Persona 5 Protagonist & Phantom Thieves of Hearts
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	plastic to plastic

**Author's Note:**

> title, chapter title, end notes from heaven will be mine, enjoy!

Sometimes, talking to Akechi is like combat. A rhythm of give and take. Back and forth. A dance.

Akechi watches Akira brew coffee. 

He watches him tie and retie his apron as its looseness or tightness irritates him. He watches his lenses fog up, watches him take them off to untuck his shirt and wipe them and return to the coffee press.

Akira watches Akechi pause to write something in the margins.

He watches him poke his cheek with his pen and half-start a sentence before scratching it out, brows furrowed ever so slightly. He watches his fingers drum, pause, start again a little slower and then quickly, efficiently, fill in a line on his crossword puzzle.

The point was, combat was typically Joker’s forte.

Back and forth, the lull and pull of the tide, wax and wane of the moon, twilight, dawn, noon, midnight. Ends of a spectrum. One or the other, with no room for things like shades of grey and half-hearted meanings between the juggle of so much absolute.

Victory and defeat. Joker and Crow.

Combat comes easy to Joker. The knife he had awoken with had been an extension of himself in every way, in a way he’d never experienced before. Wrong, part of him called out. Right, announced another.

Still, as Ryuji had whimpered quietly behind him in a castle with lust bleeding from it’s foundations, he found wielding it to be easy as anything else. It was easy to tune Ryuji’s fear into the back of his mind and throw the rest of him into the flow of battle. Mapping out the landscape mentally, careful footwork, aware of the enemies movements to a point, but not enough to blind him to the quick pace of the battle itself.

Fighting was easy. No, not easy, but natural. With growth became ease. With challenge became measurement. With battle came _freedom._ Or rather, the closest he would ever get to it. He doesn’t let himself call it freedom in truth, he will never truly taste the freedom his soul longs for, but battle, combat, it all brings him the closest to it.

He doesn’t know what that makes him. Was that what the Tricksters throughout time searched for? What the golden-wreathed thieves of the past looked to steal? Freedoms from others, passed around? Was his own vice the theft of peace to sate his own inner turmoil?

Akechi doesn’t let him entertain ideas like that for long. No matter how roundabout the conversation went, he was met pace for pace. Either way, he found that after a talk with Akechi, it was easy to discard it for now. It was far too late into the game to consider it closely, to dissect it. 

Sowing his own instability and fears, exploring his own doubts and inner-self would inevitably wreck havoc for himself and his charges by association. Now wasn’t the time for weakness. There never was a time. He’s content to lie to himself about it, throwing himself into Joker whenever it’s subtle undeniability rears it’s head.

So he doesn’t think about it very long. Or at least, not on the team’s time.

Not about the way his blade slides easily from his sleeve into his grip, inverted, like his gloves, his very hands, were made to hold it. Not about the way he levels the hilt of it for just a moment against his target, an old habit, a weakness he’d long broken out of himself that he repeats for formality’s sake, and he loosens his grip.

Joker always struck weakly on the upward stab. Joker always sliced neatly, cleanly, with twice as much force as he traced it back with an invert-grip downstroke. One-two. Inhale-exhale. Less strength, but all the precision of a killer who knew where death already clung to their victim’s skin, searching for the weakest crack in the mask to break it open. The shucking of an oyster.

The clumsiest he’s ever been with it was in an ambush, improv with no ammunition, no stamina to summon a Persona, downed allies. Desperation and yet, adrenaline. His heartbeat silent in his ears but his knife flashing in the lowlight, screaming as it scraped the floor, creaked against the Shadow that pinned him to the floor with inhuman weight. The worst part had been the ugly curve of his swipe. The black tinted blood that painted his face for just a moment before evaporating into smoky mist like the rest of it’s body.

It was horribly human, those two seconds of lukewarm liquid, spraying him.

It haunts Akira for two nights before he sorts it away. Such things haunt his teammates much longer. They come to him with worries weighing down their shoulders. With doubt taking root in their hearts. With past scars, old wounds locking shackles around their ankles, wrists, necks. They come to him with fear.

Joker doesn’t have room for fear. Crow, it seems, doesn’t either. It’s almost refreshing.

He worries, he frets, he manages his concern fairly well, but he doesn’t fear. Sometimes, he thinks he feels something akin to it, but he bottles it and boxes it away or tears into it mercilessly until he can move on. There is no room for hesitation and pause. There is no space for it all, so he picks and chooses what to keep and what to toss and moves on, because he knows. Knows that if you stop, you stop for good, you give up, and giving up isn’t an option this late into the game.

That would also mean weakness. Imply fear.

Joker can’t be weak. Joker can’t harbor fear. His teammates are gentler than he is. Akira is weak, too, but Joker isn’t made for things like that. He can’t comprehend it, really. 

The Phantom Thieves understand each others pain as much as they can, but they’ve all faced the same threats, the same vague umbrella of trauma, the same dangers with different weapons pointed towards them. Nobody will understand each other _truly._ He knows this. Ryuji doesn’t understand Joker as much as Joker will never understand Ryuji’s forgiveness. Joker will never understand Futaba’s distance towards their justice as much as Futaba will never understand Joker’s unfaltering motivation.

But they are his and he is theirs. They still understand each other in the ways that matter. Everything else can be tucked away for another time, another person, another bloody bandage to stave off the bleeding. They all speak the language even if the words and their true meanings still fall short. Even Crow’s.

Joker can’t be weak, because they trust him and his unhesitating resolve. He is their Leader. If they can’t bring the knife down, he will do it for them. If they can’t make the final blow, he will end it for them. If they can’t see past the carnage before them, he will take point and carve a path for them.

Joker can’t be weak, but he still cherishes the sunlight that blazes in his chest when they refuse to be left behind. They are stubborn beyond belief. They can’t quite follow at the speed he treks, but they still demand he slows for them, gives them time to catch up. To learn how to keep pace.

He thinks this is why he is able to find the dividing line between him and Crow. 

It’s hard. Crow is hard. He had looked at him once, somewhere a month or two before the Engine Room, like he was looking at an adult. With strange, twisted understanding and anger. Fury, rabid and foaming and unrestrained. There one moment and gone the next. Fireworks and sweets, rain and the night sky.

Akechi is seamless. Crow is layered like his namesake’s feathers. He almost wants to ruffle them, just to see the unevenness of them. Just to see what that looks like, what it looks like between the masks. It peeks through, sometimes. It’s a little unnerving, actually.

(They were parallel in every way Akechi hated him and he- he doesn’t know. He hates Akechi, too, he supposes. For making this so difficult. For trying to write his teammates off as casualties. For being so similar that he can see straight through to his own heart, mirrored back at him. Inverted. A little smeared.)

Crow is brilliant and blinding and manic, even when it’s expressed in thin-lipped smiles under casino-light. Drawn too thin to be expressive and too wide across his face to be real.

The way it smooths out into something more collected doesn’t make him any less startled, but that’s okay. Joker knows how to wear masks, too, albeit in a different way. Joker might be one of those masks himself, but so is Akira. So is every face he shows his friends, acquaintances, companions, every mask he flickers between in the moments between battles, the time that slips in the Velvet Room.

The fun part is watching him try to peel it back when Joker’s attention is divided. Each time, meeting Crow’s studious eyes is like catching a kid inching towards the cookie jar. The mounting frustration behind that gaze is what gets him through the week and a half it takes to comb through the palace.

And if it takes a few days longer than he could’ve pushed it, nobody speaks up. Akira is still trying to catch up, by the end of it.

* * *

Akechi doesn't outline where he ends and where Crow begins; to be frank, Akira isn't quite sure where their relationship is after each night in the palace, where exactly Joker left off and where exactly Akira is expected to pick up. 

The biggest lapse is between those two, the two the most similar, the two the most powerful. From Joker to Akira and back, it’s rough. Some of the pieces don’t line up completely and trying to shift between them, especially quickly, leads to vulnerabilities. Joker supposes even _they_ must have weak points.

Akechi is Crow as much as Crow is Akechi. They bleed into each other, conjoined, pressed back to back like the lovers of Greek myth. One turned upwards to the endless sky of the city and one turned downwards to the depths of Mementos.

They are dangerous. They’re wrapped so firmly around each other, covering each other’s weaknesses with their own self, it’s like they’re holding themselves together with first aid formed of their own body parts.

Joker wonders what it takes to make someone become so paranoid and self-reliant that they patch themselves up with pieces of their own self. Akira doesn’t want to think about it. 

Joker wonders what it takes to make someone feel that vulnerable and naked. Akira pushes his glasses farther up his nose and waits for the glare of light off the lenses to finish sealing his mask in the face of cruelty.

The stakes are high these days, but what comes next is the true free fall Joker has to lean into. A trust-fall, really. The fear grounds Akira. The fear stays with him, all that Joker can’t be allowed to feel pouring into every single second of Akira’s life along with his own, until all he can do is bite the inside of his cheek and wrap his arms around himself and pray nobody can see the earthquakes that shake him inside-out.

He prays Crow can’t see into the cracks but can’t help but meet those eyes anyway.

Crow is big and blurry when he focuses his eyes too hard. Untouchable in and out of combat in a different, similar way to himself. He doesn't know him, and yet- he thinks he knows him. Similar make and model, yet—

Yet.

Maybe in another life. Or maybe he just manages to check all the dozens of boxes on his layered list of those who must be this tall to ride, this reckless to get on, this loosely bound to reality, gravity, identity, culture, to be able to recognize and experience and appreciate as much as he wants to be able to recognize, experience, appreciate someone else.

That person was supposed to be impossible. Akechi and Crow, they must be more similar to Akira and Joker than they'd thought. Or maybe that much different.

Reality is brutal in how the door closes behind him as he enters, _Akechi-Crow-Akechi- **neither—**_ but he doesn't dare break the pure comfortable confidence he radiates. It's fresh, soothing his aches. Gravity forces _Joker-Akira-Joker- **neither—**_ him down, identities bleeding out freely into each other, themselves, culture dying with the last witness in the room over the floor.

He prays Crow, no, Goro, sees his justice, both of theirs, when it comes down to an interrogation room. Not thieves, not detectives, but actual humans despite how much neither of them want to be.

Two real teens, a real gun between them.

Goro had always, in their few months together, danced in the twilight between real and fiction, he supposes as a finger finds a trigger. It was about time they were forced to pick a side and stick with it.

* * *

Crow- no, Akechi- his voice breaks. It’s an ugly thing, those cracks, the flinty snarl, the screams. The rage at his situation. The disgust with what's become of himself. The terror of what he had left to lose- it's too close for Akira. Joker's hands shake.

They leave a thousand, million things between them. Unspoken. Unshared. Akira bleeds through the mask, for just a moment, and the relief in Akechi’s eyes is like a sledgehammer at full tilt. There’s fear in Akechi’s eyes, too. Underneath the stale horror, the rueful hatred, the bloody bittersweetness. He won't be human for much longer. It's what they wanted, right?

Of course Shido had been playing him. Akira wants to scream, or maybe throw up. Akira wants to cry. Akechi looks like he might too, for a moment, before it’s swept up in a steady resolve neither Joker or Akira could ever come to possess.

He’d underestimated him. And vice versa, but by whatever God was out there, had they underestimated them.

Akechi doesn’t smile, doesn’t crinkle his eyes, doesn’t look any kind of satisfied. He looks angry. He looks almost sad. He looks stubbornly determined. He looks like a teenager who’s years beyond. He looks like a teen who’s just realized and accepted his death. He looks like a teen who’ll go out with a petty bang. He looks older than his years with eyes like that. He looks tired.

He raises his gun towards them and Akira doesn’t flinch when the switch explodes in a shower of sparks.

Akechi disappears behind a wall of steel as alarms scream down at them.

Akira can barely breathe, but he promises. Joker promises, in his own way. It’s the least they can do, even as the stubborn bastard clings to his selfishness even in his last moments.

He can’t exactly blame him. Doesn’t mean he’s any more prepared to be as alone as he’s about to be.

Akechi sounds at least a little pacified by his words. He sounds like he’s a little more okay. His voice is wet and thick. 

In another life, they think wistfully. In another life, they hope desperately. In another life, they demand fate.

* * *

(I would be human for you. I would compromise, for you.)

(Please, please don't leave me alone again.)

* * *

Akira’s heart stutters with a gunshot. 

Joker cringes at the sudden silence left behind in the chaos of the engine room.

* * *

Morgana is out on a cat errand when he climbs into bed months later, whatever that means. He sits up, for a moment, staring down at the crossword book in hand. He’d spent far longer than he’d meant staring down at the pages, thumbing through the older, completed puzzles, the half finished ones, the fourth-to-last page’s empty grid, only two words filled in with neat lettering.

Some of it is in English. _A challenge?_ He wonders. It sounds like something he would do. Akira traces his cramped cursive with a fingertip when he hears the voice.

 _Akira,_ he says. _Akira. Akira. Aki-ra._

Akira looks up at him. Akechi looks back down at him and smiles.

 _Do you need help?_ He asks.

"With what?" He answers. The crossword is gone, but Akechi is _here._ Standing at his bedside.He can’t tear his eyes away.

 _Here,_ Akechi says, gentle and deceptively casual as he takes Akira's limp wrist and lifts his hand, fanning his fingers out. _Let me help you. Let's find it together._

Akira is forced to stand as Akechi pulls his wrist forward, towards himself, and he bites back a gasp as he places his spread hand firmly against his chest, right in the center.

"Akechi?"

_Can you feel it?_

All he feels is the odd, deceptively rough texture of his outer coat. "What am I feeling for?"

His coat slips off his shoulders, pooling at his elbows as he steps closer. The back of his shins meet the crates of his bed, but he doesn’t dare cringe away no matter how crowded he feels even as he jerks his hand back, startled. Both of his hands, one gloved and one bare, take either side of it and tenderly press it back to his chest.

 _Akira,_ he sounds out each vowel. It’s sweet on his tongue, effortless and curling in every way he’d always imagined it would sound, _Akira._

He wet his lips. "Akechi?"

_Do you feel it?_

All he feels is the expensive silk of his button up, pearl buttons winking subtly up at him. A little cold, if anything. Stillness.

_Akira?_

“I don’t feel it,” he says, relishing in the sight of him, in the fuzzy feeling of far-away solidity under his hand.

 _Here,_ Akechi says, cupping his jaw with one hand, his wrist with the other, leaning forward. When Akira glances up to meet his eyes, he barely has time to startle at the emptiness there before he’s being guided to look back down at their hands. _Don’t look away now, alright?_

He can’t get another word out before his hand is _wet._ It seeps into the fabric, pooling stickily under his palm, but Akechi’s grip is ruthless and vice. He can’t pull away, even as it blossoms and spreads under his hand, until crimson bleeds out into a brilliant bloom over the entire front of his shirt, and the firmness under-hand gives way.

Akira’s hand sinks _in._ Akechi doesn’t give reprieve, even when he startles and yelps, struggling to tear his wrist free of an iron grip.

_Can you feel it yet? Can’t you feel it? Where is it, Akira? Can you feel my heartbeat?_

His hand sinks farther in, fabric parting where there should’ve been ribs, musculature, instead there’s just the humid, bloodsoaked silk and the nauseating concave indentation. Stickiness floods the grooves of his fingers, trickles into the canyons of his fingernails, staining the undersides of them.

_Did you steal it, you thief? That’s all you do, steal from me. You take and take and take and take, you selfish murderer. You unlovable freak. All you do is drag everyone you meet down with you, every fake face tailored and alluring- do you get joy in tricking-_

“Shut up.”

_Did you steal my heart? Did you steal my life from me? Where is it? Where were you? Why would you do that? Why would you hurt me? Didn’t you promise you’d be with me to the end? Didn’t you promise to never break me like everyone else?_

"Akechi!" He snaps, putting more bass in his voice than he has in nearly a year. _"Stop it!"_

_Akira? My love, my dearest?_

"Stop. You're–"

_A-ki-ra? My rival, my monster?_

"You're dead, Akechi. And I–"

Akechi takes his wrist in a vice grasp, yanking him forward. Akira feels like he's moving through syrup as his nose brushes the others. His eyes are so _red._ Were they always that tint of crimson? He could’ve sworn they were a deep brown, endless umber swallowing the infinity of his pupils. Now they’re a glowing ruby, haunting, bright. Akira can’t remember, memory already failing him.

 _I’m Akechi,_ he says. 

_I’m Akechi, I’m Akechi Goro and I’m Crow. I’m the Akechi that won’t leave,_ he coos, breath hot and rotting as it clogs and catches in Akira’s throat. _I’m the Crow you can’t kill. I’m the Akechi who lives in you forever. I’m the Crow who has to remind you when you forget._

That ungloved hand cradles his face, skin stretched tight over boney fingers and long nails that dig into the side of his face. The gloved hand leaves bruises on his wrist as his hand disappears entirely into the cavity of his chest, tight silk shirt barely restraining the blood that oozes and coats Akira’s hand in bodily ooze.

_Press your face to mine, Akira. Plastic to plastic. I want to hear the sound it makes. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I didn’t want to be alone anymore, so badly. And you killed me for it._

“I’m dreaming,” he says, gagging. The dried-blood-maroon of his eyes leak out, spilling out of his iris and over sharp, hollowed out cheeks.

Akechi’s smile falls, eyes dulling. His face becomes blank. _You left me behind. I should’ve lived. I should’ve lived. I wish it was you. I wish_ **I** _was you._

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I’m so sorry, Akechi.”

 _I hated you._ Black tinted liquid bubbled out of his lips, dripping off the point of his chin and rolling down the curve of his neck in thin rivulets. _I loved you. I hated you. I loved you._

Akira swallows back his fear, his revulsion, his sorrow, and leans his head into that willowy, weak grasp, loosening the hand still gripping the space his heart should’ve been. “I know. Goodbye, Akechi.”

_Goodbye and goodnight, Joker._

He wakes up slowly, but is otherwise conscious instantly. It takes a moment to connect the hand pressed close to his face, covered in drool and simultaneously casting his morning breath back at him, the cat on his chest, the heavy comforters cocooning him into bed.

A thud sounds from the floor next to the bed as he shifts in place, pulling the sheets from his sweaty legs. A glance over the edge tells him its a crossword book.

Akira takes a moment to catch a breath that had never actually gotten away from him.

He hates goodbyes.

Morgana’s voice is low and sleepy. “’nother nightmare? ‘bout _him_ again?”

His hum is just as low, a soft yawn chasing it despite his full awareness. He’ll pick up the book tomorrow morning. It’s not worth moving Morgana.

“Sorry I got to bed so late,” the cat says, flicking his tail at his nose before returning it to the small nest he’s created on his chest with a weak pointed look. “I’ll scare ‘em off for you now. Go back to sleep.”

“Yessir,” he digs out his other arm to lazily salute, wrapping it loosely around him as he shifts to get comfortable again. 

He lets Morgana’s loud purring and rumbling send him back into a deep sleep. Deeper in the deep sleep, there are crows in his peripheral, bleeding black feathers left behind when he turns his head.

**Author's Note:**

> "i don't know who i'm sending this to. but i think about you all the time. in the back of my mind. i know a lot about you. does that mean you know about me, too? or are you just glowing brightly in way that i don't understand? is anyone else seeing this? do you get messages like this all the time? are you aware of how much you loom in the heart of someone you haven't met? what am i expecting; i don't even know. this is really awkward. sorry for doing this."


End file.
